


I Remember Everything

by Island_in_the_Shadows



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Sad Elio Perlman, only slightly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24222373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_in_the_Shadows/pseuds/Island_in_the_Shadows
Summary: What if, on the morning of Oliver's arrival, Elio suddenly knew everything that was going to happen between them that summer? Would it change anything? Is it better to speak or to die?Or, Elio wrestles with knowing he will inevitably be heartbroken before it even happens.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	I Remember Everything

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for this fandom and both this film and its source material are very dear to me so please be kind. 
> 
> As a Latina, I'm very attached to magical realism and thought a sprinkle of it could work well for Elio and Oliver's story. Hopefully you like it! 
> 
> Anything in Italics is directly quoting the movie or Find Me.

As he woke, he suddenly had memories of things that had not yet happened but that waited for him amongst the trees and the balmy summer air: the longing, the wanting, the adrenaline of love, and the torture of heartbreak—so he asked himself, would it all be worth it with the arrival of l’usurpateur? That is, after all, what he considered the graduate students that came every summer, like clockwork, to intern for his father: usurpers. They took each other’s places like faceless parts of an intellectual ouroboros. He hadn’t thought that this summer would be any different from the summers past.

It was the morning before the new grad student was due to arrive and the revealing sets of memories were perplexing him. It had all felt so real. It wasn’t just the physical touches that lingered, though those seemed to have burrowed into his nerve endings sans mercy, but the emotions behind every action and every word spoken as well. He didn’t believe in soulmates as anything more than fictional conventions brought upon for drama or something of that ilk, but what he had experienced while he was sleeping shook him to his core.

This Oliver person was complicated, frustrating, and wonderful all at once. Though there was much that irked Elio about Oliver without the actual experiences that the intruding memories seemed to suggest, he could easily understand why he would fall for someone that seemed to understand him without much being said. He also couldn’t deny that Oliver was gorgeous nor could he deny that desiring that tall, broad, and sexually imposing blond made perfect sense.

He wanted to think it was a dream but there was something inside him that said differently. It whispered in his ear that he had been here before and that he would be here again and that this was simply an inevitable cycle of his life in all its iterations. Though he could argue that the existence of multiple lives or timelines or universes had never been proven, he wasn’t brought up to be close-minded, and so couldn't rule them out all together. It all seemed so predictable in its unpredictability…he didn’t think he was going mad but he had nothing tangible except the blind reliance of the future to prove any theory he could concoct. He had scant hours to process it all before Marzia inevitably popped by and before Oliver would slip into the villa and his life without care for the beauty and destruction that was to follow him.

* * *

It was dinnertime and Oliver slumbered on what used to be Elio’s bed. The day had proceeded exactly as the premonitions had shown him it would. He admitted that they had to be premonitions now that, regardless of his thoughts throughout the day and how he had tried to deviate from the script of which he had dreamed, everything had gone exactly as he had seen. Even as he ate his dinner quietly while his parents droned on an on with some visiting friends, he couldn’t help but think that everything had followed each and every beat. The rudeness had been the same and it had felt as harsh and unwelcoming as it had in his premonitions.

Perhaps it was as his father would say later, that Oliver was merely shy. The blond carried with him an armature of titanium that seemed impenetrable and despite that Elio saw what would happen, that Oliver would eventually drop pieces of that armor to welcome him and harbor him inside, he had no idea how any of it would be done. This American was the most difficult part of the whole equation—the one part of his musical transcriptions that simply could not be brought light to or changed in any way. The man’s mind was unknowable and, as such, deeply desirable. Elio wanted to crack Oliver’s mind open with words and warmth and see what lay inside.

How had Oliver ever found the time to fall for him? When had it happened? Elio hadn’t gotten any clarity. He had merely gotten impressions of what the mental and emotional state had been from Oliver. Not the reality. For this he hated and loved him already…as fervently and viciously as a teenager could love and hate.

* * *

So here they were, Marzia and he, as they watched Oliver and Chiara play volleyball. She was gorgeous and he seemed like Apollo taking a vacation for the hell of it: blinding in his beauty and glowing with a golden tan and the perspiration gathered atop it. He knew what came next. What he needed to do to feel those large hands burn his back and his soul in one brief moment. He briefly considered whether he should even attempt it but he couldn’t resist.

Ah! There it was! That touch! He tensed and reacted as he knew he should but the truth was that, as he had already seen, he would agonize over that touch until the moment he and Oliver finally kissed. He would feel furious rage and jealousy when Oliver kissed Chiara. Thus he would try with Marzia because she was beautiful and they had been friends for as long as he cared to remember and it only made sense that theirs would be the love story that everyone would root for, according to the world. He didn’t care what the world wanted and he knew his parents wouldn’t either…he had the proof if only in his mind. His heart wanted what it wanted. He would deny himself just the same and use it to try to change the inevitable hollowing of his soul.

* * *

If he could have frozen himself and Oliver, forever, in one moment in time it would be this one. Mother Nature herself nurtured this burgeoning love inside the two of them and it was in the privacy of her company and the lighting of her sun that the simplest consummation had taken place. That he had felt those perfect lips upon his and felt his heart banging at his ribcage with sensation. He wanted more. The taste had done nothing to satiate his wanting. He knew it hadn’t sated Oliver either. He knew that they had more yet to come. He could stop it. He could prevent himself from weathering the storms of Oliver’s secretive nature. He was powerless to do so even as they rode back to the villa and forewent pleasantries.

* * *

He kissed Marzia, licked her, and slid inside her hoping upon hope that it would change the outcome. But it wouldn’t and he didn’t want it to change. _…to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!_ It was a lesson that his father would teach him and that he had already learned or he would not have waited for Oliver so desperately. He wouldn’t have played piano as if it was a requiem for what his life had been and for what his life would become with a touch of hands and a kiss.

He disassociated briefly as he and Oliver said nothing and everything when they touched hands and passed a cigarette on the balcony. Here was another opportunity. He could change his mind and tell Oliver that he was too tired to go on…that he needed time to think it through. He couldn’t. It would break him not to jump off that precipice more than it would when Oliver inevitably made winters seem as bleak as the clichés said.

 _You ok?,_ Oliver said.

 _Me ok,_ he replied even though he felt his skin prickle throughout.

He was feverish with a love and a wanting that proved deadlier the more it was left unattended. It quieted his body at the same time it inflamed it when Oliver entered him. As he knew it would be, there was nothing to compare it to. He could try a description but it would sound triter than the little scribbles he had written in what served as his diary. It was best left in his memories and in his body where, he felt, the molecules that marked his story would now have Oliver in them.

He hated him and he loved him. He loved what they had done and he had loathed it. It was nearing their end. Their apex was done. He couldn’t help but be moody about it. Where he knew the other Elio, the one that had preceded him, had been moody for altogether different reasons, he was moody for another. As he swam with _his_ Oliver in _his_ present, he knew that time was passing them by at an alarming rate and that now that they had reached a sense of happiness together, time would unravel them beyond repair whether they wanted it to or not. He was starting to mourn though there was nothing to mourn yet.

* * *

Elio could barely breathe. This was them. These streets would never be the same for him. They would forever be haunted by this night. Even if Bergamo was no longer Bergamo and it became another city, his and Oliver’s ghosts would remain here while Elio lived. _Here_ , he thought, _for a short while I held life in my hands_. He would never be the same after this. Sometimes, after this, he would think, _my life stopped here and will only restart here._ And though they would make love again in the hotel room later on, this kiss was the kiss to end all kisses. The one kiss that he would remember the most until fate should decide whether they should meet again or not. Fate seemed not to give Elio more memories no matter how hard he wished for and even prayed for them.

And then Oliver told him without telling him: I love you. He had told Elio he cared and that he too was carved in Oliver’s heart as much as Oliver had carved into Elio’s. It was a sense of freefall now and he would only land on the pavement in a matter of hours. He could practically hear the crack of his bones and the rupture of his heart. He was drunk and he was his.

* * *

The day Oliver left it felt as if Mother Nature, previously so nurturing, had turned her back on him. It was too bright and too perfect a day for what was about to happen. It was a beautiful day for a wedding, not a funeral. There was Oliver, holding him, ingraining himself into his memory. Then Elio blinked and Oliver looked back at him from his seat in the train, melancholy set in those blue eyes. Elio tried to compose himself. He could not collapse alone in this place. He wasn’t sure he could survive it. At least that’s what it felt like. His maman picked him up and, in the safety of her car, he let the painful tug of his heart take over and he allowed himself to burst into tears until he felt himself finally become hollow and exhausted with what he had allowed to happen. It had been beautiful and akin to perfection, but it was done now. All that was left to him was a shirt he would never throw out and a need to put walls up around his heart.

* * *

His call was about to come in. He would announce his wedding. Elio’s coffin would be sealed permanently after this. Did he mind? That was what Oliver would ask. Did he mind? It seemed like a silly question. Of course he minded. Oliver was, in so many ways, more his than anything or anyone ever would be. Yet Elio knew his answer would change nothing. He could fight for Oliver. He could tell him to be brave and to not marry her. It wouldn’t matter. It would only pick an unnecessary fight. Oliver “knew” himself; he couldn’t permit himself this or he would only want more. Neither Oliver nor the world were ready for them to become a “we”. 

_Do you mind?,_ he finally asked.

“I mind,” Elio responded. “But it doesn’t matter,” he added with a smile as fate fulfilled his prayers. What remained unsaid was _…when the time is right simply come and find me._

It hung between them as Elio’s parents congratulated Oliver on his engagement. It would be alright for them after all, Elio thought. His sorrow would not last forever. They would meet again. One day they would finally cement a permanent bond, one that exterior forces wouldn’t be able to shake.

 _Elio, Elio, Elio, Elio, Elio…_ he spoke into the phone.

 _Oliver_ , Oliver breathed, _I remember everything._

He didn’t. That was Elio’s burden to bear and, for now, that was all he needed.


End file.
